Franck Thilliez: Syndrome E

In the distance, a man in a tie—probably the site foreman—was pacing back and forth nonstop, cell phone glued to his ear. This kind of discovery must have been the last thing he was expecting. Even though he had no control over it, the poor slob still had to account to Financial.

Sharko mopped his brow with a handkerchief. Wide circles had formed under his arms. Poirier started to walk to the scene.

“Over there’s where the workmen found them. Five bodies, buried six feet under. The backhoe operator didn’t do too much damage—he stopped the minute he saw an arm appear.”

Sharko ducked under the boundary tape and walked to the edge of the deep trench. He turned his face away, wrinkling his nose. Poirier stood next to him, nostrils buried in his T-shirt.

“Yeah, it’s still pretty rank. They were soaking in muck, and the heat didn’t help. You can imagine how much CSI and the ME are digging this.”

The chief inspector drew a sharp breath, then studied the bottom of the pit.

“So what were they? Men, women, children? Any clue to their ages?”

“All men—you’ll get all that from the forensic anthropologist. Four of them in pieces. The dampness of the ground and proximity of the Seine must have sped up the decomp. They were practically just skeletons, though there was still some putrefied flesh, fluids, you get the—”

“And the fifth?”

Poirier nervously squeezed his water bottle. Beneath his T-shirt, he was drenched. His forehead was dripping, his skin releasing ounces of water and salt.

“Also male, fairly well preserved. Comparatively speaking. With the other bodies above and below, it must have created a kind of insulating layer.”

“Any body bags or special wrapping around the bodies?”

“No. No clothes either. They were completely naked. The guy who was better preserved had been… had scrape marks over part of his body. Arms, chest. Shit, I saw it with my own eyes… He was like a peeled orange. You can’t imagine.”

Actually, he could. He sighed. The case promised to be a tricky one, another file that would stack up with so many others in Nanterre, and that they’d churn through the computer now and then. He held his hand out to the lieutenant.

“Help me get down.”

The detective did as asked. Sharko had the feeling the young man had already seen too much, so early in his career. He was in the quagmire from which he wouldn’t emerge unscathed a few years down the road. All cops followed the same trail, the one that hurtled toward the abyss and didn’t let you turn back. Because this bitch of a job chewed you up and ground you down, guts to nuts.

The chief inspector let go of Poirier’s grip and stood in the pit. He brushed some soil from his shirt with the back of his hand. The air reeked of morgue drawers, the sun was fading, and over it all floated a sickly swelter. The cop squatted down and crumbled some dirt between his fingers. It had been sifted so as not to miss the slightest clue: small bones, bits of cartilage, insect pupae. CSI had done a thorough job. Sharko stood back up, lifting his eyes toward the ocher dirt walls. Six feet deep meant some serious digging to bury these corpses. Meticulous fellow…

“My chief mentioned something about skulls sawed open.”

Poirier leaned over the top. A bead of sweat pearled on his forehead and dripped into the trench.

“That’s true, and the press has been on it like white on rice. It’s been causing quite a stir. They’re talking about a serial killer and the whole shebang, pure craziness. We couldn’t find any of the skull tops. Just vanished.”

“What about the brains?”

“There wasn’t a thing in the skulls. Except dirt. The medical examiner is still working on it. Seems the brain and eyes are the first things to decompose and disappear after death. So for now, we have no idea.”

He stuck out his tongue and dripped the last dribble of water onto it from his bottle.

“Fucking heat!”

Feeling edgy, the young man crushed the container in his palm.

“Listen, Inspector, how about if we get out of here? I’ve been hanging around for two hours and I could use some fresh air. We can talk on the road—I have to go back with you anyway.”

Sharko looked around the place one last time. For now, there was nothing left to see or discover. The crime scene photos, the close-ups and aerial views of the surroundings, if there were any, would certainly tell him more.

“Anything else peculiar about the bodies? Had their teeth been pulled out?”

A pause. The young man gave a nod, amazed.

“You’re right. No teeth. And the hands had been cut off too. How did you—?”

“All five?”

“I think so, yeah. I— Excuse me a minute.”

Poirier disappeared from Sharko’s field of vision. A hell of a day for him, no doubt about it. The chief inspector slowly paced along the trench. In the distance, he could see the two nitwits from the TV news most likely zooming in on him. They discreetly moved away toward their rental car. The cop remained alone, staring at the empty space. He imagined the corpses, stacked five high… One had been skinned over part of his body—why? Had he been shown special treatment? Pre- or postmortem? All the questions inherent to a crime scene rushed to his lips. Had the victims met each other? Did they know their killer? Had they died at the same time? Under what circumstances?

Once again Sharko felt the first shivers of a new investigation, the most exciting part. It stank of death, backhoe fuel, and humidity, but he still caught himself loving those nauseating odors. There had been a period when he got off on adrenaline and shadows. When he lost count of the times he returned home in the middle of the night to find Suzanne sleeping on the couch, huddled up and in tears.

He loathed that past life as much as he missed it.

Farther on he found a construction ladder leaning against a wall of the trench and easily climbed out. A blacktopped road ran about thirty yards beyond it—no doubt the one the killer or killers had taken to dump the bodies. Rouen police must have started making inquiries in the area, questioning the factory staff just in case. But given the spot, they’d have had to figure they’d come up empty-handed.

A ways over, Lucas Poirier was sitting beside the Seine, cell phone at his ear. He was probably calling his wife to say it was looking like he’d be home late that evening. Soon he wouldn’t bother calling at all, and his prolonged absences would become just part of the job. And years after that, he’d finally realize that what the job really meant was learning how to live alone with your demons. With a sign, Sharko let him know they were heading out. The detective from Rouen hung up and ran to join him.

“So how did you know about the teeth?”

“A vision. I’m a profiler, don’t forget.”

“Are you bullshitting me, Chief Inspector?”

Sharko favored him with a sincere smile. He liked the naivety of these kids. It proved they still had something pure about them, a glow you couldn’t find in the old-timers, the ones who’d seen it all.

“The perp stripped his victims. He chose very loose, damp soil near the water to speed up the decomposition. Despite the fact that the spot is isolated and unsuited for building, he was afraid they’d be discovered, which is why he dug so deep. So with all those precautions, he certainly wouldn’t have left identifiable bodies. These days, specialists can lift fingerprints even from wizened corpses. The killer might have known this, so he went at it with a vengeance. Without teeth or hands, these bodies will remain anonymous.”

“Not entirely—we’ll still get their DNA.”

“DNA, yeah… You can trust that if you like.”